Holes Summary

Stanley Yelnats and his family have bad luck due to a curse that was placed on his great-great-grandfather. Stanley’s great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, was in love with a girl and another person was in love with her too. Her dad said that the person with the biggest and fattest pig would get his daughter's hand in marriage. Elya asked for a pig from Madame Zeroni in exchange for a promise. Madame Zeroni told Elya to carry the pig up the mountain, let it drink from the river and sing to it everyday until it was time for the girl to decide who she would marry. Elya’s promise was that after the pig grew strong he would carry Madame Zeroni up a mountain and sing her a song that she had taught him. After he became disappointed with the girl he thought he loved, Elya hops on a boat to America, forgetting his promise to Madame Zeroni. Elya marries and has a kid in America. He always thinks about Madame Zeroni and if she had put a curse on him because he didn’t carry her up the mountain .

One hundred and ten years before Stanley arrives at camp, the town of Green Lake was a beautiful lake where peach trees grow. In this town, Kathryn Barlow was the schoolhouse teacher. She falls in love with Sam, the onion seller. The town became angry when they find out Sam kissed Kathryn, for Sam is black and Kathryn is white. Trout Walker always wanted to marry Kathryn, so when he finds out she was in love with Sam, he gathers the people of the town to burn down the schoolhouse and attack Sam. Kathryn asks for help from the town sheriff but instead she finds out he also wanted to kill Sam. Kathryn and Sam escape but their boat gets destroyed while on the lake and Sam dies. The days after Sam was killed, rain stops falling on Green Lake and the lake dries up. Kathryn is driven mad and becomes an outlaw known as Kissin’ Kate Barlow. She kisses the men she kills, leaving a lipstick print on their faces. In her years on robbing people, she robs Stanley’s great-grandfather while he was going from New York to California. He was left with nothing and when he was rescued he was delirious and kept saying he found refuged at the top of God's Thumb, but no one knew what he was talking about. Kate buried his money somewhere and Trout Walker and his wife tortures her into revealing where she buried it. Kate dies when a yellow spotted lizard bites her and she never told anyone where she buried the money.

All the citizens of the town move away when the lake dries up and the land serves as Camp Green Lake, a juvenile delinquent camp for boys. When Stanley gets to camp he has a hard time digging the first hole because of the heat and hard ground. Off in the distance he can see the mountain that looked like a thumbs up sign. At one point Stanley digs half of his hole and finds